


and did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts

by harpers_mirror (SapphireBryony)



Series: Blow Us All Away [10]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, domestic fic, established poly relationship (background)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 10:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12933405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBryony/pseuds/harpers_mirror
Summary: The ghosts of the past refuse to stay buried forever... especially when you go around digging them up. After an overheard conversation piques her curiosity, Margot Minkowski-Koudelka embarks on a search to learn the truth about just what happened to her parents and uncle years ago.





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in three parts on my tumblr as part of my [Merry Wolfmas 25-day challenge.](https://harpers-mirror.tumblr.com/tagged/merry-wolfmas)

Dropping my backpack on the bench by the back door, I kicked off my shoes and hung up my coat. Choir practice had been canceled and so I was home way earlier than normal after school. A whole extra hour and a half of glorious free time! 

I snagged an apple on my way through the kitchen as I headed farther into the house to announce my arrival home. 

“So what does this mean? For us, that is?” 

The sound of hushed voices from Dad’s office slowed my steps and I hovered quietly outside the door. I don’t make a habit of eavesdropping on the adults in my house, but this sounded both important and potentially interesting. 

So I didn’t have entirely pure motives. Sue me.

“I don’t know, Nik,” responded my mom. She sounded tired. “I really don’t. We never figured Goddard would agree to release the records, so I never really thought too much about this particular circumstance.”

“God,” Uncle Doug chimed in. “There was a time when I’d have thrown a parade at this kind of news. All that shit coming to light? The bastards at the top having to answer for the stuff they did to us? But now...” He paused. 

Whoa. Normally Mom would have yelled at Uncle Doug for swearing that much - although, now that I thought about it, she  _ probably _ didn’t do that when my siblings and I weren’t around. That said, what on earth was going on here? This sounded super-serious and very dramatic.

“Now you’d give anything just to make it go away, rather than coming back to haunt your every waking step?” finished Mom.

“Exactly, boss.” Uncle Doug made a muffled sort of sighing noise. “I never wanted the kids to know about this. About... y’know.  _ All _ of it.”

Um, okay. What  _ exactly _ were they talking about? ‘Haunt their every step?’ What information? Jesus, had they all killed someone or been in a cult? This was way too  _ Desperate Housewives _ to be everyday life.

Creeping backwards down the hall, I slipped back into the kitchen and opened the back door, before shutting it loudly. Picking up my bag and dropping it with an audible  _ thump _ , I pretended I’d just gotten home.

“Mom? Dad?” I called. Did my voice sound as tremulous to them as it did to me? I hoped not. 

Mom came hurrying down the hall towards me. She looked awful - her face was unhealthily pale and she looked shaky. 

“Honey, you’re home early! Is everything okay?” Her voice sounded as forced-calm as my own. I played dumb.

“Everything’s fine, Mom. Mr. Eberhart was out sick today and I guess they didn’t want to make the sub stay after and deal with us any longer. Practice was cancelled. We have a makeup session next Thursday, so we don’t lose out on rehearsal time before the Christmas concert.”

Mom looked visibly relieved and I pretended not to notice. “Okay,” she sighed. “That’s fine, sweetie. Do me a favor and remind me later so I can update the calendar?”

“Yeah!” piped up Uncle Doug, joining us in the hall “Wouldn’t want you off at practice thinking we know what’s going on, and have us sitting around here not knowing where you are and going slowly crazy worrying you’ve been kidnapped by shadowy government agents!”

Mom shot him a look that could have melted the Arctic Circle and he visibly wilted. I saw him mouth the word “sorry” to her and she sighed again.

“Anyway,” I said, wondering if all the adults in my house had been replaced by alien doppelgangers with only the barest idea of how to act like normal people, “if you need me, I’ll be upstairs. Might as well get started on some of the stuff I have due right before break since I’ve got some extra time.”

Uncle Doug chuckled and that, at least, sounded normal enough. “She really is your kid, Minkowski,” I heard him say as I headed up the stairs. If she answered him back, I did hear it.

In my room, I leaned against the closed door for a moment, eyes shut, processing everything I’d heard. I didn’t know how much I’d missed, and they hadn’t exactly been speaking in super-elaborate detail or anything, but my memory was usually pretty decent. I thought I had retained most of it. 

I pushed off from the door and grabbed a notebook from my nightstand. Uncapping the pen that had been stuck in the spiral, I started to scribble down as much as I could remember. 

**Everything I Overheard Just Now:**

  * Someone called Goddard. Goddard Futuristics? (Didn’t they go out of business?) Or the spaceport in Florida? Or something else, maybe a person?
  * “Release the records,” implication of great secrecy and great harm from the release of them, to both Goddard and my family.
  * Uncle Doug: “Stuff that was done _to us_.”
  * Implication that this stuff has been hidden for a long time.



Okay, great. ‘Clear as mud,’ as my grandmother would say. Well, when in doubt, make more lists.

**Questions I Now Have & Maybe Some Answers:**

  * What happened?
    * Wow, this is vague and not very helpful.
  * When did it happen? Sounded like a long time ago, probably before I was born.
    * If it involves all of them... let’s see. Mom & Dad got married in 2009. Mom met Uncle Doug sometime after that, but before I was adopted in 2018. 9 year window, assuming it didn’t happen before or since then.
  * Who did it happen to? Uncle Doug said stuff was done to “us” - him and mom? Or dad too? 
    * Mom and Uncle Doug met at work, when they were in the military. Connection? I don’t know what they did in the military, just that it was “top secret” and Uncle Doug has joked before about Mom saving his life a bunch of times.
    * Guessing just Mom and Uncle Doug, because Dad really wasn’t talking much during that conversation.
  * Why didn’t they want us to know?
  * Are there actually shadowy government agents involved? Or was that just Uncle Doug being weird? Can’t be sure.
    * He might be a source of information if I decide to ask - he’s a terrible liar!



I sat back in my chair and sighed. I basically knew nothing except that the grown-ups in my house were hiding something from me. Something about the past, something they didn’t ever want me or my siblings to know, about the military or the government or something else complicated and dark and that scared them.

That last thought made me shiver. Mom was the bravest person I knew. Uncle Doug was always happy. And Dad was like, the chillest person in existence. And all of them were regular boring middle-aged people! Uncle Doug got excited about toys in cereal boxes, and Mom’s idea of a big night out was, like, bowling. Dad traveled a lot for the paper, which was neat, but he was also a huge nerd who liked to bring back bits of obscure trivia from the places he visited.

None of them seemed the kind of people to get sucked into the plots of vague-yet-menacing government agencies. Heck, Uncle Doug couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it, and Mom was way too straight-and-narrow to be involved in anything untoward.

This was getting me nowhere. Opening my laptop, I asked Google what it could tell me about “Goddard.” Might as well start small, with the one concrete, searchable thing I had.

Pages of results scrolled by. AI research, old space shuttle launches and newer probes. Social media results for a handful of people with the name. A family genealogy page.

And then, a result that I almost scrolled past in my skimming. It was a post on a conspiracy theories forum. Clicking through, I found a site that didn’t look as though it had been updated since the early days of the internet. 

**“GODDARD FUTURISTICS TO RELEASE LONG-SEALED HEPHAESTUS, HERMES RECORDS”** said the post’s headline. The body of the post went on for paragraphs but I lingered over that title for a moment.

I knew the names Hephaestus and Hermes from school, from the unit we’d done in English class two years ago on the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Hephaestus, the smith-god, and Hermes, the winged messenger. What they or their stories had to do with my parents, I didn’t have a clue. But the reference to records being released... that matched with what I’d overheard.

Settling myself more comfortably in my desk chair, I started scrolling through the text of the post.


	2. part two

Two hours later, a knock at my door jolted me out of my fog of focus. I slammed the laptop shut.

“What do you want?!” I shouted. Okay, I should  _ not _ be making fun of Uncle Doug for being unable to keep a secret. I sounded weird as heck. Family trait, I guess. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I mean, uh, come in?”

The door swung open slowly. Morgan stood on the other side, looking bemused. “Uh, Dad said to tell you dinner is ready?” they said carefully, clearly anticipating another strange outburst.

“Oh. Thanks.” I hesitated for a moment - should I really bring Morgan into this? They were only 13... But my sibling was probably the most sensible and level-headed among us, and calm like Dad to boot. And there was literally no one else I could talk to - the twins were just kids, and the adults were all... complicated.

“Mor’ you got a sec?” I asked.

They nodded, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind. “What’s wrong, Margot?”

“I... I don’t know for sure, but something  _ weird _ is up with the adults in this house.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Weirder than usual?”

I laughed, and some of the gathered tension faded. “Fair point. Yes, weirder than usual. I accidentally walked in on them talking about something earlier. Something that scared them.” I opened the laptop back up. “I think it had to do with whatever Mom and Uncle Doug did before we were around. I think...” I swallowed and turned the computer toward Morgan. “I think they were in outer space.”

Displayed on the screen was a grainy photograph of what looked like a small airplane crash. The caption read, “Wreckage of the craft used for reentry by the survivors of the USS Hephaestus disaster.”

“The USS Hephaestus,” I told Morgan, “was a science research vessel stationed eight light years out, around a star called - ” I double-checked my notes, “Wolf 359. It was a red dwarf that’s gone now, dunno a lot of details about that. But that’s not the important bit.” I turned the laptop back, opened a different tab, and let them see.  _ "This _ is.”

On the screen were small, poor-quality photos of my mother, my uncle, an unknown dark-haired man whose name was given as “Daniel Jacobi,” and -

“That’s Aunt Isabel,” breathed Morgan. “We haven’t seen her in ages.”

“Yup,” I said. “And more importantly, we didn’t know she’d worked with Mom and Uncle Doug. They never mentioned it and I never asked because she was just a friend of Mom’s. I mean, I know our family isn’t exactly normal, but I don’t think most kids ask their parents where their aunts and uncles came from.”

Morgan nodded absently, eyes fixed on the screen. “Mom looks so... so...”

“Half dead?” I asked, a little more sharply than I meant to. The pictures were upsetting to look at. “They all do! Look at Uncle Doug, he looks like a zombie scarecrow.” 

Morgan looked away, and I could see tears starting to form. 

“Oh Morgan, please don’t cry, I didn’t mean to upset you! I just...” I stared at the screen, at the haunting, dark-eyed, gaunt face of the woman who would one day be my mother. It felt like looking at a photo of a stranger. The familiar determination was there, sure, but it was overshadowed by something hard and dark and brittle. The woman in the picture looked like she was either about to tear someone’s head off or fall down in a sobbing heap, maybe both all at once. And I couldn’t even look at the picture of my uncle. I hadn’t been exaggerating with my earlier description.

I didn’t tell Morgan about the other things I’d read, about the theories of multiple crews aboard the ship, murdered piece by piece. About mutinies and monsters and experiments. About forged death certificates and transmissions home that never reached their recipients. 

About the handful of men and women who’d been on board the Hephaestus with Mom and who had died under her command.

The rumors of aliens I dismissed outright, as this  _ was _ a conspiracy site after all. Though after what I’d learned today, I wasn’t totally sure  _ what _ to believe any more.

Morgan sat silently, broodingly. “I just remembered something,” they finally said. 

“Oh?”

“I remember Uncle Doug telling me a story one time, when I was real little and real into Wonder Woman. Remember that phase?”

“Vividly,” I replied. “You spent about two month running around the house in your invisible plane and tying up people in your ‘lasso of truth.’ Mom had to cut Uncle Doug loose once and you cried and cried ‘cause she’d cut up your lasso.”

Morgan grinned slightly. “But then she got me a better one, on the condition I stopped tying up him and Theo and Celia. Anyway, he was putting me to bed one night. I wanted a Wonder Woman story, but Mom was out somewhere and he and I couldn’t find the book. So he made up one on the spot for me. Or at least... I thought he did. But it involved Diana saving a guy named Doug -”

“Creative!” I interjected.

They snorted and continued. “ - who’d been kidnapped by a mad scientist in space from giant space spiders that wanted to drink his blood. He slipped a couple of times and called Wonder Woman “Minkowski,” which I kept correcting him on. And at the end, I told him I thought it was a good story but kind of weird, and he said something like, ‘The truth is stranger than fiction, kid.’”

Slowly I said, “You don’t think it was fiction, do you.”

With a glance back at the computer screen, Morgan shrugged. “I dunno what to think. I don’t think there are really giant space spiders, but I know there’s a lot they don’t tell us. I know Mom hasn’t always been a flight instructor and I think there’s a lot about Uncle Doug we don’t know.” Morgan paused. “We should ask them,” they finally said.

I blinked. “You think? This is some dark and twisty shi - stuff. I don’t know how much of it is true, but would they even tell us?”

“One, you can swear in front of me,” sighed Morgan. “I’m  _ thirteen, _ not a baby. Two, what’s the worst that can happen? They lie about it and then we know something’s up and do more research. At best, maybe we find out we’re all secretly aliens. Who knows?”

“Okay. I guess...” I thought for a moment. “I can try and talk to them after dinner. I should probably do it alone though.”

“Hey, no fair!” objected Morgan.

“I know, I know, but I’m older. They might tell me stuff that they wouldn’t say in front of you, to protect you or something parental like that. Plus, I need you to keep the twins occupied so I can talk to all three of them at once. I want to get as much as I can, and they  _ definitely  _ won’t talk if the twins are running around or getting into shi - stuff -  _ shit." _

Morgan looked pleased.

I continued. “So is it a plan then? You keep the kids busy - help ‘em with their homework or something, I know they’ve got a big project coming up for social studies that Theo has been slacking on. Ciel is ready to strangle him. Mediate that for me while I talk to the grown-ups, and I’ll tell you everything they tell me later. Deal?

We shook on it.


	3. part three

Dinner seemed to take forever. The grown-ups were strained, clearly trying to act normal. If I hadn’t known what I knew, I’d have thought they’d been arguing about something boring and adult, or that they hadn’t gotten enough sleep or something. But now that I knew something was up, I found myself scrutinizing their every word and look.

Uncle Doug was being very quiet, which was the weirdest thing of all. He was keeping his eyes on his plate and eating quickly. Maybe he figured he couldn’t blurt out top secrets with a mouth full of spaghetti.

Mom mostly just seemed nervous, glancing back and forth between Uncle Doug and Dad like she was waiting for something bad to happen. Someone’s phone rang about halfway through the meal and she almost hit the ceiling. She disappeared into the kitchen for a minute after that, as Dad took the call in his office. Uncle Doug followed her, and they came back a minute later holding hands, which was red flag number two - Mom usually wasn’t big on PDA in front of everyone. I raised my eyebrows at Morgan across the table.

The twins, bless them, were oblivious to it all. Celia was trying to tell a very involved story about something that had happened in her French class - thanks to Mom being a native speaker, we were all pretty decent, and Celia had gotten permission from the school to take French with an older year. The class, and its Cool Teenage Inhabitants, were a source of endless fascination to my little sister. The rest of us generally found it less fascinating, tonight especially. 

The last straw came when Theo, doing something weird with his knife and fork, managed to tip his glass of milk onto his dinner plate.

“Oops,” he said, eyeing the resulting mess with interest. 

“Yeah, no,” I said, swooping in and grabbing his plate. As I carefully carried it to the sink, I caught Morgan’s eye. 

“Hey Mor’, why don’t you  _ go help the twins with their project?”  _ Okay, I know, it was as subtle as a rampaging AI crashing a transcontinental flight, but it did the job. Morgan nodded and walked around to their side of the table. 

“Okay munchkins, let’s go. You have a project to finish.”

“But it’s not due for a weeeeeek!” whined Theo.

“And last week you were saying  _ ‘But it’s not due for two weeeeks,'" _ said Celia, mimicking him. “And now we have even less time. I’m never working with you again.”

“Mom!” Theo sounded very put-out.

Mom looked up at him blankly. She’d been deep in quiet conversation with Uncle Doug and had evidently missed the drama.

I jumped in. “And again I say, ‘nope.’ Go with Morgan and they’ll  _ help _ you with your project so you can get it over and done with and never think about it again. And Celia will stop bugging you. No offense Ciel.”

She rolled her eyes and headed upstairs. Morgan and Theo followed behind, a touch more slowly - Theo was literally dragging his feet. Sometimes I wondered how Mom put up with all of us.

Right. Mom. I turned back to the other end of the table where Mom was sitting with her head on Uncle Doug’s shoulder. They both looked so tired. I almost chickened out, tried to rationalize it as not making their day worse or more stressful or whatever but... that was lame and I knew it.

“Mom?” I asked.

She sat up. “What is it, Margot?”

I swallowed hard. “Um, can I talk to you guys? You, Dad, and Uncle Doug? Alone? It’s kind of important.”

“Are you being drafted?” asked Uncle Doug. He was aiming for “joking” but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“Please?” I asked again, hoping they’d see my serious face. They glanced at each other for a moment and then back at me.

“Sure, kiddo,” answered my uncle, slowly. “Let’s head into your dad’s office. He should be off the phone by now.”

I nodded and stood up. We all trooped into the study together. 

Dad was indeed off the phone. He was sitting in his chair, apparently staring at the ceiling, but when he heard us come in, he flinched a bit, like we’d snuck up on him.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Margot asked to talk to all of us,” Mom replied.

“Oh,” said dad. “Sit.”

We sat.

“So,” said Uncle Doug, after glancing at my parents. “What’s up, kid?”

I took a deep breath. “I heard you guys talking earlier. About... about the records that are being released.” All the grown-ups in the room shot unreadable glances at each other. I gave them a minute before continuing, “And I did some research.”

Mom inhaled sharply. Dad leaned back in his chair.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time. And I suppose it would have been you,” he said, rather cryptically.

“What... what did you find?” asked Mom. 

“Um, where do I start. Oh yeah, maybe with the part where  _ you guys went to outer space and managed to keep that a secret?” _ I clapped my hand over my mouth. Shit, this wasn’t how I’d wanted to do this! 

Taking another deep breath, I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just... kind of wild, you know? Finding out something like that?”

“Trust me,” said my dad, dryly. “I’m rather acquainted with the feeling.” 

Mom snorted. Some of the tension dissipated.

“But yeah,” I said, trying to get us back on track. “I overheard you guys, got enough for it to be Googleable, and found some stuff on a conspiracy theory website.”

“Oh boy,” said Uncle Doug. “Um, kiddo? Not sure how accurate all that might have been...”

I flapped a hand at him. “Don’t worry, I ignored the crazy bits about aliens and stuff. But it’s true? You guys really went to space?”

Slowly, Mom nodded. “We did. That’s how we met,” she said, gesturing to herself and my uncle. “I was the commanding officer of a scientific research station called the USS Hephaestus. Doug was my communications officer.”

“And Aunt Isabel?” I asked. “Her picture was on the site too. It listed you two, her, and some guy called... Jacob? as the ‘survivors.’ What, um, what did you survive?”

“Well, first things first, yes. Isabel was... kind of a part of our crew,” said mom. “It was complicated.”

“Is that why we haven’t seen her in so long?”

Mom sighed. “Isabel has her own way of doing things. And those ways don’t always line up with anyone else’s. She’s fine, she’s happy, I think, but she’s... got other things to worry about right now. I will see if I can’t get her to come around sometime though. As for the rest...” She glanced at my uncle.

I think he’d been waiting for her permission. Now that I knew she used to be in charge of him, a lot of things about them made more sense. He jumped in and took over the story.

“As for the rest, the three of us and Jacobi - he was another crew member who came later, a real ‘heel-face turn redemption arc’ sort of story, by the way - were the ones who made it off the Hephaestus. The mission itself is what we survived. The people who sent us out there never planned for us to make it back home. Neither of us should be here right now. But your mother decided that wasn’t acceptable and she and Isabel got us out of there.” 

The way he was looking at my mother almost made me uncomfortable. It was  _ reverent. _ Like the way he stared at pristine vintage comic books, or the way people in medieval paintings stared at Jesus. There was clearly a lot of stuff about them I’d never really understand and that was probably for the best.

“That,” replied my mother, “is a very unnecessarily flattering and overly-simplified version of what happened. I did what I had to do, some of us made it out. Some of us didn’t. And those of us who did just tried to forget about it.”

“But weren’t you mad?” I asked. “Didn’t you want these Goddard jerks to pay for what they did to you?”

“At the time, hell yeah,” said Uncle Doug. “Uh, sorry, ‘heck’ yeah,” he corrected at my mother’s look. “And some of us, like your Aunt Isabel, still do. She’s probably thrilled these files are finally being released. But others, like your mom and me, decided a long time ago that we had to move on and put the past in the past, because there was absolutely no guarantee we’d ever see justice done. There was no guarantee the good guys would win, and the bad guys were  _ really _ good at being bad guys. Your mom and I realized we could spend a lot of time and energy trying to be hero-martyrs or we could refuse to let them steal another second of our lives and move on and be happy. And I think we’ve been pretty successful.” He sank back into the couch, looking worn out. Mom wrapped an arm around his shoulders but didn’t take her eyes off of me.

I was silent for a long moment. My parents were looking at me in concern. Finally I spoke.

“I guess that makes sense. I get why you wouldn’t want something bad to take over your whole life, and why it would suck to have it dragged back up again just when you thought it was gone. I’m still not sure how you managed to hide the whole “we’ve been to space” thing from us for so long - I didn’t think you guys were that good at coordinated secret-keeping.”

“Hey now, you’d be surprised at how sneaky we can be!” protested Dad, smiling slightly.

I laughed. “Fair enough. But I guess... I still feel like I don’t really understand it all.”

“Join the club,” sighed my father. 

“I suppose we can try to answer whatever questions you have, honey,” said my mom, looking worried. “But there’s a lot that we can’t get into, some of it  _ legally, _ and...” She paused like she was debating what to say next. “Those files, assuming they haven’t been doctored all to hell, contain some really dark and disturbing things, Margot. Things I wouldn’t want you to know about in a million years. I’d prefer you never looked, but I can’t stop you. Even if I could, I don’t think that would be fair to you or to your intelligence. I can’t and won’t forbid you to read them. But I want you to remember, if you do, there’s no way to un-know that information. And I don’t want you to regret it. We never wanted you kids to think of us as anything other than normal boring adults, and this might change that.” 

She paused, then added, “I  _ will  _ ask that you not tell the twins. The fact that you were able to find so much with so little to go on makes it clear that the past is not as buried as we would have liked, and that will only get worse once the information in those files is public record. I’m betting it won’t be long before I’m having this conversation with them, but I want you to let us handle that conversation.”

“Sure, Mom,” I said, nodding. “I wasn’t going to tell them anyway. They’d freak.”

“A sensible reaction, really,” said my father.

Mom shot him a look and continued. “Am I correct in assuming Morgan already knows some or all of this?”

I nodded, looking away. “Sorry. I didn’t know what to do and my brain felt like it was going to explode.”

“It’s okay, kid,” said Uncle Doug. “This was a weird situation that you didn’t know what to do with. Anyway, Morgan’s generally pretty calm about stuff, I think they’ll be fine.”

“Can I tell them what you guys told me just now? I kinda promised I would, in exchange for Morgan keeping the twins contained while we talked.”

“I wondered about the sudden spate of helpfulness among my elder children,” mused my mother with a small smile. “That’s fine. Same request for Morgan - don’t tell Theo or Celia, think hard before digging more, come talk to us if they want.”

“Okay, I’ll tell them.” I paused, wondering if I should ask the question I was burning to ask.

“Spill, kiddo, your face just turned into a giant question mark.” Damn it, Uncle Doug was good.

“I just... what was it like? What was  _ space _ like?”

Mom and Uncle Doug looked at each other.

“Lonely,” said my mother.

“Way too empty but also way too full,” said my uncle.

Well that was creepy and unsettling. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

“But also kind of beautiful,” he added a moment later. “There were colors that we don’t have names for, if you knew how to see them.” He was looking in my direction, but not at me. I thought he was looking at something else, a long, long way away.

“Okay,” I said, standing up. “I’m gonna go upstairs now. Thanks for talking to me.”

“Thanks for trusting us to tell you the truth,” replied my uncle. “I dunno if I could have done that at your age.”

I nodded and left the room. Heading upstairs, I passed the room where Morgan was dealing with our siblings and headed into my room. I shut the door, flopped onto my bed, and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling.

I had a lot to think about.


End file.
